1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printer control system, and more particularly, to an apparatus for controlling a printer, by which an image is printed in a raster mode by counting functions, which affect the printing speed, from an image, and a method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, printer drivers include a font processing module and an image processing module, and control printing operations. Here, an image processing module includes a vector module and a raster (or bitmap) module. A vector module defines each image written in a document as objects and produces commands corresponding to the objects. A raster module converts an image into a bitmap in contrast with in a vector module and transmits the bitmap to a printer.
In a process for processing image data in a conventional printer driver, when an application executes a printing command to print a document, the graphic device interface (GDI) of the Windows calls the printer driver. Next, the printer driver sets a vector mode, in which a document can be more precisely printed, rather than a raster mode as a default, when typical documents are printed, and processes an image on an object-by-object basis. Here, an image included in the document of a specific application is made up of hundreds of thousands of objects.
Accordingly, the printer driver must produce a large number of vector commands if it converts these objects into vector commands. Also, when a document having complicated data is printed, a printer must interpret a large number of objects received from the printer driver and reorganize them into one page, resulting in a time-consuming printing for one page.